Day 181 – Bangkok, Thailand

August 6th, 2019

I had asked Brendan if he would plan Bangkok so I could take a turn being the tourist who gets shown around and not have to worry about all the details like where we stay, how we get there, etc. etc.  He agreed and last night when we got to the hostel he looked through their flyers for things to do and booked us a tour for the train market and a floating market.  So today we got up really early to be ready for our tour that started at 6:45am. 

They picked us up and drove us a long time out of town (we were driving for about 1 ½ hours) and the first stop was the train market.  Since I was taking a break from planning, I had no idea what to expect with this ‘train market’.  I didn’t know if we were getting on a train, or if the market was in the train, or if people buy things out the window of the train or what.  We had a guide, but I say that very loosely.  I could never actually hear what he was saying and what I did hear I could not understand.  I think he was attempting to speak English but again it’s hard to say.  When we got there all I really knew is we were supposed to meet back at a certain spot in like 20 mins.  So, he wasn’t actually guiding us.  Brendan also had no clue what the train market was so we just kind of followed other people and did what they did which was stand back with their phones out.  We walked around train tracks where there was a market on either side. 

After 5 minutes of walking on the tracks everyone started to pull back their canopies and cover up their fruit and produce that was on the ground and motion for people to get off the tracks.  During this commotion of everyone trying to get off the tracks a lady carrying a bag of raw meat was trying to get past Brendan.  All the sudden I heard him say “Eww!”.  I said “what??” and he was like “that lady just used her bag of raw meat to get me out of her way by shoving it on my leg and now there is stuff dripping down my leg!”.  He then said “you don’t just put a wet, dripping bag of raw meat on someone’s skin! That is fouled up!”.  I burst out laughing as we both tried to find a place to stand off the tracks while not stepping on all the people’s market items they had on the ground and all around.  I guess the ‘train’ part of the market was about to happen as everyone had their phones out and ready.  The train came and slowly rolled by and as soon as it passed everyone put their canopies back out and uncovered their items for sale and continued their day.  So, I guess the novelty of the train market is that they have a market right on the side of the tracks and have to cover up their fruit when the train comes by that just narrowly clears the covered items on the sides of the tracks. So, once we witnessed that phenomenon we went back to the van to make our way to the floating market. 

The only thing I understood our guide say the whole day was “at the markets they sell fruit” (which no disrespect but that was blatantly obvious) and “not to worry”.  I wasn’t really worried about anything, but I guess it was nice to have his reassurance that if I were to start worrying about something, I shouldn’t.

The floating market was a pretty cool site to see.  They had a canal with all these long tail boats and a market on either side of the canal.  In the boats were passengers who could buy things from other vendor boats or the vendors on the side of the canals.  We walked through the market on the side of the canal before we got on a long-tailed boat and rode in the canal.  It was fun and pretty chaotic with everyone selling things. 

After the market they took us back to the city.  We spent the rest of the day just walking around and saw some cool things along the way that I took pictures of.  I wonder what tomorrow will bring!